Quote from pspr:
Max, Germany was also trying to reassert itself after their humiliation in WWI. I think that could have been a big factor in the German people following Hitler.
As thinking people, I'm sure you, as I have, thought if you were born into Germany in the 1920's would you have been the righteous person we think we are today or would we have just gone along and become murderous Nazi's ourselves?
I thought about this a lot when I was young and my conclusion is that given those circumstances and indoctrination and without any other strong religious or right/wrong training from parents, church or school, we (or at least I) would probably turn out no better than those who became Nazi murderers.
I would like to think that conclusion is wrong, but I fear it is not.
This is a great thread and I want to comment more, from a general perspective, later.
This particular post caught my attention because it addresses an event in the human laboratory people routinely ignore and dismiss as 'implausible' because it falls too far outside conventional experience. IOW, "it can't happen here".
The reality is Hitler's Germany was a very upright, moral, Christian people, long before (and after) 1930. The untold side, as pspr alluded too, was the Treaty of Versailles bankrupted Germany, which led to the debauchment of the Mark, hyper-inflation, then wholesale economic collapse. Naturally, German families were destroyed in the process which created widespread resentment and outrage - fertile ground the Nazi's seized on to take root, and rise to power. The moral here is humans profoundly underestimate the complete 180 they can make when bad things happen to them.
What's more important, and within the vein of this thread, is the US becomes Greece in 3 years. The US Dollar could easily lose reserve status in ~4 years. While America won't be faced with a Weimar-like collapse, the routing will be absolutely severe, similar in magnitude to the Great Depression. This, in a time, where the American people are far less moral, upright and financially independent than they were 50 years ago, let alone 100. This will also happen within the context of a Federal Government that has given itself Hitlarian power to arrest American citizens and imprison them indefinitely (without a trail), to spy on Americans without a warrant, to kill American citizens on a whim, again, without a trial. Now, there's legislation tabled within the house to strip Americans of citizenship if deemed an enemy of the State. The Feds are preparing to go after American citizens, on American soil, identical to 1930's Germany. Except in this instance, the "undesirables" won't be Jews or Gypsy's; it will be patriots, gun-owners and anyone who supports the Constitution (the anti-thesis of the naked executive power already passed). People who say it can't happen, it has. People who say it can't happen here, it's happening, right now, legislatively. Congress and Obama are setting the table for something extremely horrible. People better wake up now, because in a year or two, it will be too late.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-0a-wZoEbCk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WIQ4S8xAMac" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>